The second phase of applications for Higher Education brought more 444 new students to the University of Algarve (UAlg), who join the approximately one thousand who had already guaranteed admission to the courses of this institution in the first phase. The numbers for 2011 are close to those of other years, but there were surprises when it came to the candidates' choices.
At this time, it is still necessary to determine the contingent coming from special competitions (transfers, reentries, people over 23 or graduates within the CET), «it is expected that the total number of new students will approximate the number of vacancies in the competition».
«Although the number of new students is approaching the vacancies in the competition, there are courses that have not managed to attract the expected students. Others, on the contrary, exceeded expectations», revealed the UAlg, in a statement.
Courses in arts and communication, health sciences and technologies, economics, tourism and management, psychology, education, sociology and sport mostly achieved '100 percent placements'. «Some courses in the areas of biology and engineering have also achieved good results», revealed the Algarve university.
The same cannot be said of the others, who, according to UAlg, have even had “poor results”, having noted “little demand in courses offered in after-work and distance learning schemes”, something that was felt in other educational institutions. Public Higher Education, stressed UAlg.
“The most problematic cases focused on almost all engineering in the polytechnic and university subsystems. On the one hand, the entrance exams for these courses were more difficult; on the other hand, the decrease in engineering candidates was accentuated, conditions that justify this reduced demand. The inversion of this trend, necessary for the regeneration of the national productive fabric, will oblige not only an effort of public promotion, but also the maintenance of the quality level of the offered courses», he considered.
In order to try to reverse this trend, in the future, UAlg will reinforce «the actions of clarification among secondary school students, in order to guarantee that the growth of the flow of candidates for higher education keeps the pace of the last years».
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